'Hart Aber Fair' (Hard But Fair) came on last night, and had a curious discussion topic. No, it wasn't Covid-19.
The discussion centered on growing regulations in cities, single-family homes, and rental 'caps'.
The statistic that came up early and really says a lot.....63-percent of Germans either have a single-family home, or they dream of it.
The apparent end-point of the 70-odd minute chat forum? You come to four central themes:
1. A whole lot of politicians talk about the housing issues, but do next to nothing about it.
2. Cities have x-amount of space to build upon, and unless you expand out (taking farmland or wooded areas)....you can't construct more housing. The argument here....you don't build out....you build up (multi-story apartment buildings).
3. There are tons of empty houses around the country in rural areas, and people in those villages/small towns can't really grasp or understand the discussion.
4. Significant regulations are coming, and price increases will be the norm (call it the San Francisco phenomenon, where nothing new gets built and prices rise in a meteor-like way).
Right now, I'd rate this 'housing crisis' as a top five issue politically. Sadly, none of the six major parties have any agenda or solution to put forward.
At the end of this chat forum (which I admit it was probably one of the best three of the past couple of years)...you are left with two general groups. The first group has no idea how to resolve or fix the housing mess. The second group believes that rigid regulation and harsh limits (especially in major cities like Berlin or Hamburg) will be the norm over the next decade. In both cases, the only viable path is to leave the urbanized zones...move an hour away (by train) to find rural regions without the regulation or price-structure problems.
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